One thing you can always say about Billy Bob Thornton: He's not afraid to be brutal in his projects. After four seasons of being on the gritty legal drama Goliath, he next play a meth-dealing kingpin positioned in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains in the film Devil's Peak, based on David Joy's 2015 novel Where All Light Tends to Go.
Thorton's crime lord character is one who controls his family and his business with his fists, demanding complete loyalty from all those around him with unflinching violence. A character that sounds at home in a Scorsese gangster flick but far less finesse:
However, as he dominates the mountains, his eighteen-year-old son Jacob (Hopper Penn) finds himself between appeasing his father who wants him to one day take over his position and leaving the mountains forever with the girl he loves (Katelyn Nacon). As the trailer shows, this will lead to a no-holds-barred fight between father and son that makes Robert Knott's script seem like a twisted take on Romeo & Juliet...except the parent of one of the kids isn't ready to ever understand love as a concept, even to his own son. Check out the trailer below:
Devil's Peak co-stars Robin Wright, Jackie Earle Haley, and Emma Booth. It is directed by Ben Young and is set to hit theaters next Friday, February 17th.